Abstract

Understanding the socio-economic and environmental implications of rural change
requires the active participation of many research disciplines and stakeholders.
However, it remains unclear how to best integrate participatory and biophysical
research to provide information useful to land managers and policy makers.
This paper presents findings of a RELU scoping study that has formulated and
applied a research framework based on stakeholder participation and adaptive
learning to model rural change in the Peak District National Park in the north of
England. The paper describes a learning process that integrates different types
of knowledge to produce future scenarios that describe possible economic and
environmental changes due to a national review of burning practices on heather
moorland and blanket bogs. We stress the need for using social network
analysis to structure stakeholder engagement and outline how a range of participatory
approaches can facilitate more inclusive environmental planning and policy
development.